The present invention is directed to methods for operating a vacuum processing apparatus. In particular, the present invention relates to a method for operating a vacuum processing apparatus comprising: a plurality of coupled vacuum transport chambers; a plurality of coupled vacuum processing vessels; and a plurality of processing chambers; wherein a substrate-like sample, such as a semiconductor wafer, is arranged and processed in the processing chamber inside the vacuum processing vessel, and wherein the vacuum transport chamber comprises a plurality of coupled vacuum processing vessels.
In a semiconductor device processing step, there are various processes, such as etching, ashing, and film-forming processes, and various vacuum processing apparatuses corresponding to these processes are widely used. In these vacuum processing apparatuses, a reduction in cost and an improvement in productivity are required. As a productivity index, there is a process throughput (the number of wafers processed per unit time), and increasing this throughput value and improving a production efficiency per apparatus are the important subjects.
As a related art for the above-described vacuum processing apparatus, for example, as described in JP-A-2011-124496 (corresponding to U.S. Patent Publication No. 2011/144792), a vacuum processing apparatus of a linear tool is known, wherein a plurality of transport robots are arranged in a transport mechanical unit, to which a processing module is coupled, and an subject to be processed is delivered and received between the plurality of transport robots. In this related art, in the case where there are a plurality of transport paths on which the subject to be processed, such as a wafer, is transported, a technique is disclosed for selecting and determining a transport path, on which the highest throughput can be obtained, by comparing the throughputs of the respective transport paths to each other.
Moreover, as described in JP-A-2011-181750 (corresponding to U.S. Patent Publication No. 2011/218662), there is known a vacuum processing apparatus including a load lock chamber, in which a sample to be processed is housed and which transports the sample between a portion on an atmospheric side and a decompressed and vacuumed portion by increasing or decreasing a pressure between an atmospheric pressure and a predetermined degree of vacuum, the apparatus comprising a plurality of processing chambers, in which a predetermined process is performed on the sample to be processed; a plurality of transport mechanical units each of which includes a vacuum robot delivering and receiving the sample to be processed; a plurality of transport intermediate units that couple the transport mechanical units and relay and transport the sample to be processed. In this related art, the vacuum processing apparatus includes a control unit that controls delivering/receiving and relaying/transporting of the sample to be processed. Here, the control unit includes: a connection distance calculation unit that calculates a connection distance from the load lock chamber to each of the transport mechanical units; a transport-operation count calculation unit that calculates a number of times of transport operations of the sample to be processed to each of the plurality of processing chambers connected to the vacuum robot; a transport operation order calculation unit that calculates a transport operation order of the samples to be processed in each of the vacuum robots, based on the number of times of transport operations to each of the plurality of processing chambers and each of the plurality of transport intermediate units performed by the vacuum robot; and a processing chamber allocation unit that performs allocation of each of the plurality of processing chambers to which the sample to be processed, whose transport operation order is calculated, is transported.
With such a configuration, in a vacuum processing apparatus, wherein a plurality of transport robots are arranged in a transport mechanical unit to which a processing chamber is coupled and wherein a sample to be processed is delivered and received between a plurality of transport robots, the further the transport robot located from the load lock, the larger the number of transport operations to the processing chambers is set. Moreover, JP-A-2011-181750 (corresponding to U.S. Patent Publication No. 2011/218662) discloses that an efficient transport control is performed by performing a transport operation based on a destination determination unit and an operation control rule to set the number of times of continuous transport operations to the processing chambers as small as possible and set the number of times of continuous transport operations to intermediate chambers to an odd number as much as possible.
Furthermore, as described in JP-A-2011-181751 (corresponding to U.S. Patent Publication No. 2011/217148), there is known a vacuum processing apparatus comprising: a processing chamber for performing a predetermined process on a subject to be processed; a transport mechanical unit comprising a vacuum robot delivering and receiving the subject to be processed; a transport intermediate unit that couples the transport mechanical units and relay and transport the subject to be processed; and a control unit that controls delivering/receiving and relaying/transporting of the subject to be processed, wherein the control unit determines a method for transporting the subject to be processed to each of the processing chamber and the transport intermediate unit based on a time required for the processing chamber to process the subject to be processed in the processing chamber.
In this related art, with such a configuration, there is disclosed a technique for performing an efficient transport control in a vacuum processing apparatus of a linear tool, wherein a plurality of transport robots are arranged in a transport mechanical unit, to which a processing chamber is coupled, and a subject to be processed is delivered and received among the plurality of vacuum robots, the vacuum processing apparatus including a plurality of control methods, wherein it is determined, based on a processing time of the subject to be processed, whether a transport robot is rate-controlled or a processing chamber is rate-controlled, thereby switching to a control method corresponding to the portion to be rate-controlled and performing an efficient transport control.